


Snaps

by CrossedBeams



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canon Divergent, Deleted Scene, Early MSR, F/M, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:57:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7948891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrossedBeams/pseuds/CrossedBeams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An X-Files rewatch chat led to a concept - what if after Scully's lacklustre date in The Jersey Devil, she meets up with Mulder who somehow comes to discover that her lace top was actually one of those '90s bodysuit that fastened underneath with snaps...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snaps

She tells herself it’s responsibility that makes her take out her pager at the table, that it’s duty driving her to the phone, that the electricity running from his lips into her ear is static and nothing less professional. She had told herself the same thing that morning, when his slight recoil at the thought of her on a date called every tiny hair on her spine to stand to attention. Better to blame overzealous air conditioning for the thrill running through her than admit that she, Dana Scully, wanted her partner to care whether or not she was dating.

And she definitely hadn’t dressed with him in mind, hadn’t deliberately stretched white lace over the curves her work suits hide so completely. There was no ulterior motive when she painted her lips red and admired the cream of her skin peeking through the false modesty of the sheer blouse, no idea that she might take a detour on her way home to some crisis or crime scene and get to find out whether his gaze lingers longer on the slim circle of her waist, the flash of gold at her collarbone or the seamlessly smooth curve of her ass.

No. None of it was for Mulder. It had all been for the man across the table from her. Rob. At least she’s pretty sure his name is Rob though he’s spoken of nothing but his child for the last two courses so it could be the kid’s name. Probably-Rob is handsome enough and responsible enough to tick all her mother’s boxes and most of Scully’s own and yet… her mind slips once again out of the side door of the conversation to explore the dark alleys and twisted connections of her work on the X-Files. Her work with Mulder.

This date was supposed to be a distraction, a flattering diversion from running headlong into this tempting new mystery. When she quit medicine for the FBI she promised herself she would take her time choosing her next steps, tempering instinct with rationale so she is able to justify to Ahab and to herself, the merit of her decisions. And so tonight she chose to be here, with Probably-Rob and his family anecdotes instead of with Mulder, fast food and tall tales of beast-men and evolutionary anomalies. Empirically she knows it was the smart choice but it feels so wrong. It’s not that she doesn’t like Rob, or that she dislikes children or the idea of having them, but the conversation seems so painfully domestic, so numbly similar to the ones she overheard week-on-week in church growing up that despite her best attempts to pay attention she finds herself contemplating a lamp in the corner that looks like a flying saucer and wondering how long it would have taken Mulder to crack a joke about it.

She notices a silence and realises that she is meant to have responded, to be engaging in some witty first-date repartee and all she can do is smile tightly and quietly thank God for the arrival of dessert. Probably-Rob’s eyes light up at his strudel which matches, almost perfectly, the beige of his hair and suit and his enthusiasm for the pallid dessert far outweighs the vague warmth with which he told Scully she looked good upon arrival. There’s nothing wrong with him, he’s an attentive date and is more than holding up his half of their interaction, but as the minutes tick by Scully is forced to acknowledge that it is not a conversation she is interested in having. That for now, this well-meaning, gently patronising family man is the last thing she wants. She wants to be reckless, to test the limits of science and reality and herself and that the place to do that is at Mulder’s side.

Surreptitiously, she reaches into her handbag and turns on her pager. Coming in, her intentions had been pure even if her thoughts wandered, and she feels she gave it a chance but now it’s time to move on. It takes less than five minutes for Mulder to buzz the final nail into the coffin of the date, the familiar vibration of his message sending a thrill under the lace to the tips of her fingers and toes.

Scully feigns an apologetic face and tries to walk to the phone at a steady pace, denying the adrenaline that urges her legs to run to Mulder, to escape the tedium of normalcy. As she dials she schools her face into a blank expression, somehow feeling even down the line her partner will know how welcome his interruption has been, will know from the speed of her call how often her thoughts have strayed to him.

He answers on the first ring with unconvincing apologies and tells her he has had an amazing thought. Scully bites her lip to stop herself from telling Mulder that compared to Rob, any of his thoughts would be amazing, that as much as she questions his process, she’s still a little in awe of his mind. He tells her he’s not sure about the beast-man, that perhaps they’re looking for a beast-woman and then pauses in anticipation of her ridicule. She leaves him hanging, draws out the silence into something tangible, something brittle and then he breaks, mutters something about an expert and some files that still need reading and hangs up abruptly.

Scully tells herself that she will absolutely not go back to the office to help him out. She tells herself as she walks back to the table that she will not make excuses, invent a crisis, and then she tells Probably-Rob that there’s been a case development, signals for her coat and is out on a whisk of her best perfume and a half-hearted cheek-peck before five minutes have passed. She hails a cab and before she has come up with a suitably rational excuse for her presence, she is in the elevator arriving in the basement. Their basement.

Blue light seeps sleepily round the crack in the door and she can hear, whether in reality or her memory the sound of sunflower seed casings falling to the desk. Her heels announce her arrival with more confidence than she feels; swift, deliberate clicks that slow slightly as she reaches the door, delaying the moment where she will step into their office as Dana Scully off-duty-in-lace and have to explain to Fox Mulder, who will believe in anything but her good intentions, why she has abandoned her date for his distinctly non-urgent call.

She lingers longer than she means to and the moment is taken from her, the door swinging open into his dark hazel gaze and a flash of something passing between them before he defuses it with an amused,

‘Were you planning to come in and help or just stand outside all night.’

Scully sighs, banishing the fantasies she was half spinning about his response to her arrival and accepting the return of their same old dynamic; believer, sceptic, evidence and one desk to work it all out. She pulls up a chair and shrugs of her coat, throwing it carelessly on top of a cabinet and as she stretches, catlike before turning to sit, she catches him looking.

He’s staring at her, or more specifically at her body, and she glances down to see her bra clearly visible in the glow of the screens, blue light picking out the solid white behind the dappled lace. He’s trying to compose himself when she looks back up, to pull on a more office-appropriate expression, amusement or bitter humour maybe, anything that isn’t the wild, stormy darkness she just glimpsed for the very first time. For one moment in the half-light they weren’t just partners, for two heartbeats she was a woman and he was a man and they were electric.

Mulder flicks on the overhead lights and dissolves the magic but Scully isn’t ready to let it go quite yet. She likes him off-balance, likes that she can surprise him. And so she bites her lip and speaks without thinking too hard about it.

‘See that was the reaction I was hoping this ensemble would get from my date.’

Mulder dips his head bashfully, and her right eyebrow rises in triumph as the tips of his ears turn red with embarrassment. He clears his throat and puts the desk between them, drawing strength from the more conventional set up and when their eyes next meet his are the usual hazel. Scully sighs and settles in for a long night.

 

* * *

 

They make it all the way to the parking garage before Scully remembers she doesn’t have her car. It’s well past midnight and the thought of going all the way back up through the building and getting a cab is exhausting. Without thinking, she grabs Mulder’s sleeve to explain what has happens and is shocked out of her sleepiness by the strength of his response, an involuntary flinch at the lightest brush of her hand on his wrist. The air thickens as he turns and Scully catches another glimpse of that same lingering expression before she remembers herself enough to tell him that her car is at home. A half-smile chases the uncertainty from between them and he gestures at his beaten-up, never-clean excuse for a car.

‘Your chariot awaits Miss Scully’ and though she rolls her eyes at his faux-chivalry she is far too tired to think of an appropriate come-back and instead throws her coat into the back seat , careful not to look too carefully at the layer of mess it’s resting on. Scully collapses into the front with a heavy sigh and for the first time Mulder looks across with slight concern,

‘Are you okay Scully? You’ve been quite…. Sigh-ey tonight?’.

She chuckles. ‘Sigh-ey? You learn that one at Oxford, Mulder?’ But he doesn’t take the bait and follow her into their usual antagonistic banter, she is not getting out of his question so easily. And so she continues. ‘Honestly I’m just tired. This evening didn't turn out exactly as I thought it would and my feet really hurt, the date was not worth putting myself through these shoes. I don’t think he even noticed what I was wearing and I didn’t even get to eat my dessert.’ Scully tries not to sound petulant and fails. She can blame the lacklustre conversation on Probably-Rob but if she’s honest with herself, she was disappointed, if unsurprised that her attempt to dress sexily, to leave good-Catholic-Dana at home, hadn’t been more successful. She crosses her arms over the peek-a-boo lace and resolves to donate it to Goodwill tomorrow.

‘Was your date a seeing man?’ Mulder’s tone is light and his question throws her.

‘Mulder I’m not in the mood to joke about it right now okay?’ Scully settles back further in her seat, closing her shoulder and her defenses against any further enquiries but her partner is not deterred.

‘I’m deadly serious Scully,’ And Mulder’s hesitation backs him up, pausing on the edge of a boundary before crossing it to come to her ego’s rescue. ‘Unless your date was blind, blindfolded or not into women, he noticed your outfit. You look… incredible.’ His voice trails to nothing on the end of his confession, the “edible” lingering on the edge of silence but flashing bright in the space between them. Mulder had noticed. Scully knew he had noticed, but the verbalisation of this knowledge is the first step into uncharted territory that stretches blankly across the centre console and keeps their partnership so very simple.

Mulder’s face is soft and slightly self-conscious at his revelation and so Scully flashes him one of her real smiles, one with a flash of teeth, as a thank you for this huge, tiny gesture, before they both turn back forward and watch the quiet streets of late-night Washington flash by. They’re halfway to her house when the indicator flashes an unexpected left and they swing into the parking lot of a convenience store. Mulder mutters something about fish flakes as he gets out and returns two minutes later with a large carrier bag and a small grin, both of which he tosses across to her as he swings back in. Scully yelps at the cold that instantly begins to leech into her lap and tugs the bag open to reveal a pint of mint-chip ice cream.

Eyes wide she looks across to her now, very definitely grinning partner who is waggling his eyebrows and two plastic spoons at her.

‘Dessert!’ is his only comment and then the engine is running and Scully’s staring down at another gesture she isn’t sure what to do with, cheeks warm, hands cold around the ice cream and mind working in overdrive to try and work out what this means. By the time they arrive outside her apartment she has reasoned away all but the purest of intentions, casting Mulder as the considerate partner and friend. She ignores the lurch in her stomach when they pull up in a pool of streetlamp yellow, the hitch in her breath when Mulder pushes his chair back and reaches across to her and the mixture of disappointment and relief that courses through when she realises he is only helping himself to the tub. Supportive friend. She can do that and she tries to relax in her seat to watch Mulder prise off the lid and scoop out a huge mouthful before passing the ice cream back so she can follow with her own spoon. The sharp mint and dark chocolate sing on her tongue and she hums appreciatively, unaware of the effect her noise has on the man across the car from her. Had Scully glanced across she would have found Mulder watching her out the corner of his eye, swallowing more rapidly than the single scoop of ice cream required, tongue darting nervously out to remove an imagined scrap of dessert from his lip.

But Scully has drifted into imagining, absent mindedly noting the differences between her plan for the evening and the realities, reluctantly admitting how much that disparity says about who she is right now. She was supposed to spend her evening being wined and dined by an exceptionally suitable, uncomplicated and available man, one who shares her upbringing and values, to end it all with a dessert arranged artfully on a plate, an attentive waiter and maybe a chaste but promising goodnight kiss. But she couldn’t even see the scenario through to completion and instead finds herself scarfing ice-cream in an idling car with an eminently unsuitable man who also happens to be her colleague. Somewhere in the back of Scully’s mind she can hear her mother mourning her daughter’s poor judgement but she pushes that thought away, along with the other little voice telling her she’d like a hell of a lot more from Mulder than a goodnight peck.

Seeing she has finally relaxed, Mulder allows his partner to drift uninterrupted in her thoughts, watching her spoon waver uncertainly over the slowly melting ice cream and trying not to notice as she absently worries her lower lip, tongue chasing the white of her teeth to collect the lingering sweetness of the mint-chip. Scully finally returns to him with another sigh, this one soft and regretful rather than the frustrated huffs of earlier, and tells him she should go, snapping the lid back on to the tub and his wayward thoughts of leaning across the console to taste her lips himself. Unwilling to release her Mulder hops from the car and hurries to open her door, earning one of her best eye rolls as he extends his hand to help her out. Scully ignores the hand, unsure if her reluctance is feminism or terror that she won’t want to let it go but accepts his unspoken offer to walk her to the door, the two of them falling into stride as they pass from streetlight into the shadow of her building.

They must be walking closer than usual because as they hit the stairs her hand brushes his sleeve again and this time there is no pull back, just a rhythmic brush of contact on every other step, seemingly innocent but laced with intent. Scully fumbles her keys without meaning to and so they pause at the door while she tries to collect herself, work bag and ice cream bag and keys tangling in the shelter of Mulder’s tall frame. Finally the tumblers turn and the door creaks open, opportunity starting to drain away as they shuffle their feet and look anywhere but each other. Scully realises how much more like a first date this is than anything that happened with Rob and the thought makes her giggle, raising sparkling eyes to meet Mulder’s confused ones.

‘This is so silly!’ She explains, gesturing at the two of them. ‘All of it! Crazy! Me going on a date with one guy and coming home in the early hours with someone else? That someone else being you? You turning off conspiracy mode long enough to make me feel better? And then this - walking me to my door like we were the ones on the date? Ridiculous!’

Mulder frowns slightly, ‘I don’t think it’s that ridiculous…’ but his partner is on a roll and trips on in a gently hysterical monologue,

‘Well of course it’s not completely ridiculous, I mean I have dated before but it is ridiculous for me to be nervous about you walking me to my door! Maybe I had more wine than I thought I did? Maybe the sugar went to my head? It makes no sense for me to be worrying about what I ate earlier because it’s not as if…’ Scully trails off, suddenly realising the dangerous territory her stream of consciousness has left her in. ‘Not as if it matters’ she finishes aimlessly.

And it seems like somehow the space between them has halved though neither of them has moved. Scully makes eye contact, to try and communicate her apology for saying too much and thinking too little but finds no awkwardness in the chocolate of Mulder’s eyes. Instead there is a question.

‘What if it did matter?’ His voice catches halfway between a whisper and a prayer, the low questioning hum of every question humans are scared to ask but need answered.

Scully shakes her head, though at what she’s not quite sure. He shouldn’t do this.

‘Mulder… this has been a very long night and the ice cream was an incredibly sweet gesture but we don’t have to play along anymore. This isn’t a real date… I don’t… I won’t stand around and joke about... ‘ she’s not sure whether he moved or she did but she can see the stars in his eyes now and his face is too close to hers for anything but-

‘A goodnight kiss?’ and then Mulder’s lips swallow the word and all of her hesitations in a brush of mint.

The kiss is moonbeam light and impossibly sweet. Scully’s eyes are closed and before she can open them and bring back reality there are hands on her cheeks and another kiss, this one harder, sure of the questions it is asking. Did she really think he didn’t notice her outfit? Did she really wonder if he wanted her. This time the air that escapes her lips is a gasp and not a sigh and the ice cream falls to the floor between them to start melting along with all her objections into a mint green puddle on the step. She grabs handfuls of Mulder’s jacket to pull herself away, to look at him and make sure that this is really happening, that this is what they both want and finds that her puppy of a partner is all wolf in the moonlight.

Scully speaks his name as a question and he answers with his tongue, darting forward to taste the same spot on her lips he watched her fuss with earlier. The door yields easily behind them, pouring them on to the stairs where they stumble messily together up to the first floor, his jacket barely making it into her apartment before tumbling to the ground.

The lights are off and in the light from the street they look at each other with new eyes. Mulder is tall and angular, the cowlick of his hair standing up from the explorations of her hands, his work clothes rumpled by the day and his chest rising and falling in anticipation. Scully is tiny and luminous, the brightness of her eyes and her blouse and her giddiness spreading into the corners of the room and drawing him right back to her.

He hadn’t planned for this, hadn’t expected the rush of anger he’d felt to the faceless man who had failed to give Scully the date she deserved. And at first he hadn’t been aware that he was trying to compensate, he had needed fish food but the freezers had caught his eye and he would from now on forever have a soft-spot for mint-chip ice cream. Maybe he would have been more guarded if he’d realised how close they both were to the breaking point. But then he wouldn’t have found himself here, in her home, hands full of lace-locked skin and a mouthful of stars.

Mulder laughs into her kiss at how sappily poetic his thoughts have turned and Scully pulls away, uncertain, mind beginning to kick back in and reminding her that they haven’t discussed this, haven’t analysed its meaning and consequence, that their consent has been purely physical. He doesn’t let her get far, giving her an arms length but keeping his hands on the small of her back, leaving her in no doubt that this is what he has guiltily imagined since the night she arrived at his motel room in nothing but underwear and a red robe.

He watches her try and frame a question that will absolve them both of responsibility for this fit of hedonic madness if he answers how she fears he will and pre-empts its’ arrival.

‘Please don’t reason your way out of this Scully’, is his plea and when she opens her mouth to object he covers her uncertainty with a kiss almost as gentle as their first before drawing away again. ‘Maybe neither of us planned on being here tonight. Maybe this wasn’t the goodnight kiss that you wanted but please don’t think this is a heat-of-the-moment thing. I’ve been wondering if I’d ever get the chance since… well ever since that first case.’ And for the first time that evening it seems like he’s really surprised her, more than the ice-cream, more than the kiss on the doorstep.

‘Since the first case? Since Bellefleur?’ Scully’s face is a gallery of expressions as she runs through their five week history, looking for evidence and coming back empty handed. ‘But how did I never notice?’

Mulder smiles, ‘I do have a psychology degree Scully, I was very, very careful in my body language, I thought the second you realised what I was thinking you’d slap me or quit. I never thought… never believed...’

‘Fox William Mulder, believer in aliens and mutants and beast-men didn’t believe that I might be interested in more than a professional encounter? That’s your most ridiculous theory yet!’ Her disbelieving tone is becoming as well known to him as his own voice and he revels in the familiarity as he runs his hands up her sides, lace tickling his palms as they skim over the even ridges of her rib cage.

‘It’s not so ridiculous.’ He counters, feeling her breathing change, quicken under his caress. ‘Look at you Scully’ and the reverence in his voice is her undoing. This time it is definitely her that closes the gap, her hands running under the untucked hem of his shirt and finding hot, hard skin as she reaches up on tippytoes to learn the lines of his face with her mouth. It is her tongue that leaves a minty-fresh trail down his jaw and on to his neck. Mulder anchors her, explores her, at first content just to press her flush to him, fitting his hands in turn to the sleek curve of her ass, the nape of her neck and the surging promise of her breasts, only half-hidden by fabric. As their kisses grow messier and their breath dissolves into ragged pants, the front of Mulder’s shirt falls open and is pushed away. His search for skin has been less successful, fingers tugging at the join between lace and skirt without success. Scully’s skirt is too tight to slide up and as her deft fingers make short work of his belt and fly Mulder finally gives up, grabbing her hands in his, kissing them impetuously, such kind, capable hands, before asking the question that no grown man wants to ask in the heat of the moment.

‘Scully… I’ve changed my mind. I hate this outfit, I think it’s glued on. How do I get it off?’ He feels like a teenager again, grappling with his first bra but Scully’s eyes widen in realisation and she giggles again, the increasingly familiar sound running from his ears straight to where his trousers are already uncomfortably tight.

Without another words she reaches behind herself and the hiss of a zipper heralds a decadent slide of black fabric over her hips to pool at her feet. He notices that at some point she has kicked off the patent heels that started them both on this unexpected path but then he forgets about everything except for the white lace garment that is all Scully is left wearing.

It covers her like a second skin from the delicate bones of her wrists to the collarbone and drops down all the way to where it vanishes between her legs. Tiny on her bare feet she looks like a slightly rumpled, excessively sexy gymnast.

‘Is that… a leotard?’ Mulder chokes and she executes a slow twirl to confirm his suspicions that this tantalising garment is indeed all one piece. Somewhere, as if from very far away, he is aware of her telling him that she bought it out shopping with her sister, that it was something of an impulse. He hears the word body suit but his mind is full of her body, the flirtation of the clinging fabric between covering and not covering playing havoc with his sanity and his hormones.

When she stops talking, turns and begins walking in the direction of her bedroom he follows, dazedly trailing the gentle sway of her hips, worshipping the high-cut line between pale velvet hip and stark white lace as it leads him, a willing sacrifice, to either nirvana or some hellish dimension where he must forever watch his partner walking away from him in nothing but lace.

And it truly is nothing but lace. He feels like one of the characters in the movies that definitely don’t belong to him as he follows his unexpected siren to the bedroom and realises that she is not wearing panties under the bodysuit, That if… no… when she turns around, he will be able to tell by the presence or absence of a flash of auburn whether or not Scully shaves her pussy. He prays she doesn’t, envisions losing his fingers in that blaze of red as he has already lost them in the glossed silk of her hair. He hardens to the point of agony and then they are there, paused for an uncertain second in the newfound-land of her bedroom.

Mulder has never seen it before but it looks like Scully, pale and practical with dashes of bold genius. The bed is white but the bedside table is stacked with books of every conceivable size and colour, a portrait of a hungry mind and he wants to read every single one, to drown in the words that she devours, to be devoured by her.

And then her lips are back on his and he missed her turning, missed the revelation he’d been waiting for and somehow it doesn’t matter. Scully is oxygen, Scully is air, the desire to take in every breath and the tightening need to let it go again. Mulder doesn’t want to let her go, especially as her hands are once again at the top of his pants and this time they fall without so much as as a whimper of defence. No his whimpers are being saved for the moment where - SHIT!

Velvet and steel.

She feels like velvet and he is metal hard in her hand and he tells her as much. This time she doesn’t laugh, just lets her eyelashes follow her Scully-Blue gaze down from his hazel to the soft spot where neck meets shoulder and she whisper-kisses better the place where her teeth have just left a mark. He groans and dips his hand between her legs, the last few conscious moments have been spent desperately searching for a way inside the lace but without success. He is approaching madness at the tantalising closeness of her heat. Scully ripples against his hand, her tongue buzzing on his chest and it’s enough to send him over the edge, to wrap his hands around her thighs and lift her bodily, forcibly on to the bed where she sprawls like a Renaissance painting, limbs askew and chest heaving and there, yes, a flash of red like an answered prayer at the lowest part of the suit. He bridges her once, smoothly for a kiss before skimming his way down, narrowly avoiding distraction at the point where the turbulence of their arrival has half exposed one nipple, trapping it between bra and lace. But Mulder resists, dropping his attention to the seam between her legs, to the place where his exploratory finger felt what turns out to be a pair of snaps. He toys with them, fingers brushing teasingly along the outside of where they both want him to be before running the tip of his nose due south from her navel, steadily, inexorably approaching the vanilla musk that is his partner, the part of her that every FBI handbook forbids him to explore.

Mulder never was very good at following the rules but Scully was. Until him she had never fudged a report. Until him she had never been anything less than 100% accurate. Until him she had never knotted her fingers in her partners hair and tried, helplessly to force him to the centre of the circuitous trail his is licking from thigh to thigh. She’s on the brink of screaming, of tearing the damn lace off her own body when with a click she realises he has bitten down on the snap fastening. Scully gasps at the hint of wetness, at the promise of his heat against her own and feels the fabric stretched tight across her torso slacken slightly. One snap has fallen.

The other he takes his time over, Mulder’s oral fixation clearly extends beyond sunflower seeds and his tongue makes phantom journeys over the surface of her pussy, darting moisture but never pressure along the ley lines of her pleasure. And then teeth again. Hard and deliberate, pulling the fabric away from her, cooling, cooling and then the snap of the last fastening giving way, a second of oblivion and then his mouth and his hands exactly where she wants them.

Scully groans and winds her hands into the now slack lace at her waist, tugging at the fabric until it runs ragged across her breasts, shifting her bra until the friction adds to the spell Mulder is casting with two fingers dipping and circling her heat and his tongue spelling out his name on her clitoris. She abandons herself to him completely, turning off the filter in her mind that she reserves for first times, that veneer of politeness which always leaves her unsatisfied but comfortable in the knowledge that she has not been too wanton or demanding. Somehow she knows that Mulder will take her where she wants to go, will take her further even, to some place with a name more made up sounding than Lake Okabogee where all that is left is their bodies and the things they can do to one another.

A third finger and hot breath, a brief detour with a hint of fingernail on the creamy expanse of her inner thigh and then firm, relentless strokes that drive her further and further from sanity until all she can think of are the places she is touching or being touched and all she can hear, think or say is, ‘Mulder - oh, god - Mulder - yes!’

And then it is everything all at once. It is heat and cool chasing each other through her synapses, nerve endings parting company as they flex and shoot pleasure to the base of her skull before knotting tightly, deliciously back together again. Over the surging strings or her orgasm, Scully feels Mulder smile against her and though she is still caught in the thrall of the present her hands act on her brains only remaining cogent thought, to bring him closer to her. Her fingers loosen in Mulder’s hair and trail down his cheeks to gather him up to her, a languid climb over his newly marked territory pausing only to slide the lace body up and away to lie unwanted on the floor, the plain white bra soon joining it in a tawdry tangle.

It is only them now.

Mulder and Scully on the blank canvas of her sheets, five week of maybes forming a hazy backdrop to their masterpiece. This is not how the evening was supposed to end, not how their partnership was supposed to develop and yet… though they choose not to speak they are both aware that there is something very different about this hasty encounter, some strange familiarity muddled headily with an impossible wonder, old souls in new bodies or two parts of one whole or some other horrendous cliche that somehow makes perfect sense when it’s written on the skin of one in the touch of the other.  
  
They pause, waiting for something, and then through the window the light turns silver, the moon appearing from behind a cloud and blending with the streetlight to illuminate the bed. Scully breathes deep, taking in the fresh, woody smell of him and as Mulder settles between her legs their mouths meet in what is not exactly a kiss but rather the two of them breathing together, her opening and him pressing until where there used to be two things there is now only one.

Still there is silence except for breaths caught and released in desperate harmony, Mulder, lost in the silken tightness that is Scully, the firm line of her hip meeting him as inevitably as the tide before slipping away until he fears it lost forever and drags her back. Scully is full for the first time in the longest time with more than questions, good intentions and meaningless checklists. This makes no sense, this is not a decision of the head but one of instinct and physicality and every time her mind threatens to drag her out of the pulsing sanctuary that is her, enclosed by Mulder’s frame, her body and her heart chase it away and send her floating once more on a river of sensations. In the golden pool of moonlight on her bed there is only him and his rhythm and the sensation of skin working deeper into skin, imprinting Mulder forever on her and her on him.

When the pace quickens he dips a hand lazily between them, somehow knowing what she needs, tight circles above the steady bass of his cock and somehow he is capable of maintaining control over his own need, to bring her to the brink of reality before sending them both crashing down.

They ride out the aftershocks hand in hand, sprawled messily side by side in a disaster of their own making. In the morning they will have to discuss their partnership, the future, the messy pool of green on her doorstep but for tonight everything has fallen into place. Mulder pulls her to him on the edge of the bed, replacing the ghost of her lace with the white of the sheet in front and his chest behind.

This was not the evening they had planned but it is the night they both needed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the tumblr gang for the idea... I'll tag you all when I'm sober. This story is sponsored by merlot.


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